Monday, October 28, 2013

365 Comics...301: Marvel Now What?! (One-Shot)(2013)

The folks at Marvel seem to be having a lot more fun than their Distinguished Competition. I mean, all the goofy variant covers is one key sign, but the other is stuff like this where they actively make light of themselves. Also there's someone at Marvel who enjoys comedy, in recent years having Bill Hader and Seth Meyers write a Spiderman story, hiring Brian Posehn and Grerry Duggan for Deadpool, and hear bringing ex-Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac and 30 Rock cast member Scott Adsit, amongst others, in to lampoon the current state of the company or present off-beat, out of continuity sketches starring Marvel characters.

As all anthologies are, it's a mixed bag with the first big sketch from Elliott Kalan and artist Jacob Chabot being the strongest and the funniest. Meanwhile Duggan and Posehn present a retro tale of Doc Oc appearing on the gong show, an absurdly amusing bit delivered with some of Pat Olliffe's finest work to date but even more nailed by colorist John Kalisz.

The low point is Lucas Hazlett and artist Jacob Chabot's SNL-style sketch about Professor X hiring a team building duo to whip the 90's X-Men into shape. It feels like a gag already worn thin even before the premise is fully revealed. Equally the "Catfish" sketch from Sara Schaefer and artist Steve Lieber feels like it exists solely for the punny title of "Cap-fished"... it feels like reading a humour anthology from at least 2 years ago.

Adsit's riff on the watcher Uatu on the receiving end of an intervention is amusing with a totally obvious but also ingenious punchline.

I remember now why I uninstalled the Marvel AR app, though, because it never *expletive* works. Guess I'll never know why that last page was left intentionally blank. ..